As promised. More to come. I’ve come up upon some minor stumbling blocks reading the old fairy tales – one is the language and sentence structure of the era, one is translation into English that makes the sentences awkward, then the people who translate them don’t often use the correct punctuation. For example, they leave out forms of punctuation, such as quotes and indentations, which makes it hard for the reader to discern whom is speaking, etc.
In speaking to a bilingual friend and researching other sites on Grimm which provide the original translation I discovered there is some awkwardness in the translation and that explains some of why in English the sentences sound strange- it does not sound Shakespearean, not even medieval, just ill-constructed. The translation issue bothers me as it may change the meaning in subtle or significant ways, as I have come upon this many times before with Greek with poorly translated analogies- not so sure if this applys as much w/German.
The site below has many stories , but illustrates perfectly the challenges I just described-in any case, it is something I will have to get better at dealing with before I record more pertinent (To WN) Grimm tales- for now, enjoy-
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~spok/grimmtmp/
Snow White & Rose Red Download Link: http://www.filesend.net/download.php?f=e032aadcea5111aa5a12d01f7f0bc0c8
The Seven Ravens: Download Link: http://www.filesend.net/download.php?f=89094ff1ac429dabf646be3793eca976
The Spoils of War 